Life on the Mississippi
as long as I could, but it was too pitiful a sight; so I made frank
confession to that effect, and we retired. We heard afterward that the
black cock died in the ring, and fighting to the last.
Evidently there is abundant fascination about this 'sport' for such
as have had a degree of familiarity with it. I never saw people enjoy
anything more than this gathering enjoyed this fight. The case was the
same with old gray-heads and with boys of ten. They lost themselves
in frenzies of delight. The 'cocking-main' is an inhuman sort of
entertainment, there is no question about that; still, it seems a much
more respectable and far less cruel sport than fox-hunting--for the
cocks like it; they experience, as well as confer enjoyment; which is
not the fox's case.
We assisted--in the French sense--at a mule race, one day. I believe I
enjoyed this contest more than any other mule there. I enjoyed it more
than I remember having enjoyed any other animal race I ever saw. The
grand-stand was well filled with the beauty and the chivalry of New
Orleans. That phrase is not original with me. It is the Southern
reporter's. He has used it for two generations. He uses it twenty
times a day, or twenty thousand times a day; or a million times a
day--according to the exigencies. He is obliged to use it a million
times a day, if he have occasion to speak of respectable men and women
that often; for he has no other phrase for such service except that
single one. He never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him.
There is a kind of swell medieval bulliness and tinsel about it that
pleases his gaudy barbaric soul. If he had been in Palestine in the
early times, we should have had no references to 'much people' out of
him. No, he would have said 'the beauty and the chivalry of Galilee'
assembled to hear the Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that the men
and women of the South are sick enough of that phrase by this time, and
would like a change, but there is no immediate prospect of their getting
it.
The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, direct, unflowery
style; wastes no words, and does not gush. Not so with his average
correspondent. In the Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned by a
trained hand; but the average correspondent hurls a style which differs
from that. For instance--
The 'Times-Democrat' sent a relief-steamer up one of the bayous, last
April. This steamer landed at a village, up there somewhere, and the
Captain invited some of the ladies of the village to make a short trip
with him. They accepted and came aboard, and the steamboat shoved out
up the creek. That was all there was 'to it.' And that is all that
the editor of the 'Times-Democrat' would have got out of it. There was
nothing in the thing but statistics, and he would have got nothing else
out of it. He would probably have even tabulated them, partly to secure
perfect clearness of statement, and partly to save space. But his
special correspondent knows other methods of handling statistics. He
just throws off all restraint and wallows in them--
'On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place graced our
cabin, and proud of her fair freight the gallant little boat glided up
the bayou.'
Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard and the boat shoved
out up the creek, is a clean waste of ten good words, and is also
destructive of compactness of statement.
The trouble with the Southern reporter is--Women. They unsettle
him; they throw him off his balance. He is plain, and sensible, and
satisfactory, until a woman heaves in sight. Then he goes all to pieces;
his mind totters, he becomes flowery and idiotic. From reading the above
extract, you would imagine that this student of Sir Walter Scott is
an apprentice, and knows next to nothing about handling a pen. On the
contrary, he furnishes plenty of proofs, in his long letter, that he
knows well enough how to handle it when the women are not around to give
him the artificial-flower complaint. For instance--
'At 4 o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the south-east, and
presently from the Gulf there came a blow which increased in severity
every moment. It was not safe to leave the landing then, and there was
a delay. The oaks shook off long tresses of their mossy beards to the
tugging of the wind, and the bayou in its ambition put on miniature
waves in mocking of much larger bodies of water. A lull permitted a
start, and homewards we steamed, an inky sky overhead and a heavy wind
blowing. As darkness crept on, there were few on board who did not wish
themselves nearer home.'
There is nothing the matter with that. It is good description, compactly
put. Yet there was great temptation, there, to drop into lurid writing.
But let us return to the mule. Since I left him, I have rummaged around
and found a full report of the race. In it I find confirmation of the
theory which I broached just now--namely, that the trouble with the
Southern reporter is Women: Women, supplemented by Walter Scott and his
knights and beauty and chivalry, and so on. This is an excellent report,
as long as the women stay out of it. But when they intrude, we have this
frantic result--
'It will be probably a long time before the ladies' stand presents such
a sea of foam-like loveliness as it did yesterday. The New Orleans women
are always charming, but never so much so as at this time of the year,
when in their dainty spring costumes they bring with them a breath of
balmy freshness and an odor of sanctity unspeakable. The stand was so
crowded with them that, walking at their feet and seeing no possibility
of approach, many a man appreciated as he never did before the Peri's
feeling at the Gates of Paradise, and wondered what was the priceless
boon that would admit him to their sacred presence. Sparkling on their
white-robed breasts or shoulders were the colors of their favorite
knights, and were it not for the fact that the doughty heroes appeared
on unromantic mules, it would have been easy to imagine one of King
Arthur's gala-days.'
There were thirteen mules in the first heat; all sorts of mules, they
were; all sorts of complexions, gaits, dispositions, aspects. Some were
handsome creatures, some were not; some were sleek, some hadn't had
their fur brushed lately; some were innocently gay and frisky; some were
full of malice and all unrighteousness; guessing from looks, some of
them thought the matter on hand was war, some thought it was a lark, the
rest took it for a religious occasion. And each mule acted according to
his convictions. The result was an absence of harmony well compensated
by a conspicuous presence of variety--variety of a picturesque and
entertaining sort.
All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable society. If the
reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies of New Orleans
attend so humble an orgy as a mule-race, the thing is explained now. It
is a fashion-freak; all connected with it are people of fashion.
It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule-race is one of the marked
occasions of the year. It has brought some pretty fast mules to the
front. One of these had to be ruled out, because he was so fast that he
turned the thing into a one-mule contest, and robbed it of one of its
best features--variety. But every now and then somebody disguises him
with a new name and a new complexion, and rings him in again.
The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored silks,
satins, and velvets.
The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a couple of false starts,
and scampered off with prodigious spirit. As each mule and each rider
had a distinct opinion of his own as to how the race ought to be run,
and which side of the track was best in certain circumstances, and how
often the track ought to be crossed, and when a collision ought to
be accomplished, and when it ought to be avoided, these twenty-six
conflicting opinions created a most fantastic and picturesque confusion,
and the resulting spectacle was killingly comical.
Mile heat; time 2:22. Eight of the thirteen mules distanced. I had a bet
on a mule which would have won if the procession had been reversed. The
second heat was good fun; and so was the 'consolation race for beaten
mules,' which followed later; but the first heat was the best in that
respect.
I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race;
but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule-rush. Two red-hot
steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve--that is
to say, every rivet in the boilers--quaking and shaking and groaning
from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black
smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into
long breaks of hissing foam--this is sport that makes a body's very
liver curl with enjoyment. A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless
in comparison. Still, a horse-race might be well enough, in its way,
perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome false starts. But then,
nobody is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever killed when I was at a
horse-race. They have been crippled, it is true; but this is little to
the purpose.
CHAPTER 46
Enchantments and Enchanters
THE largest annual event in New Orleans is a something which we arrived
too late to sample--the Mardi-Gras festivities. I saw the procession of
the Mystic Crew of Comus there, twenty-four years ago--with knights
and nobles and so on, clothed in silken and golden Paris-made
gorgeousnesses, planned and bought for that single night's use; and
in their train all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosities, and other
diverting grotesquerie--a startling and wonderful sort of show, as it
filed solemnly and silently down the street in the light of its smoking
and flickering torches; but it is said that in these latter days the
spectacle is mightily augmented, as to cost, splendor, and variety.
There is a chief personage--'Rex;' and if I remember rightly, neither
this king nor any of his great following of subordinates is known to any
outsider. All these people are gentlemen of position and consequence;
and it is a proud thing to belong to the organization; so the mystery in
which they hide their personality is merely for romance's sake, and not
on account of the police.
Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and Spanish occupation;
but I judge that the religious feature has been pretty well knocked out
of it now. Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl
and rosary, and he will stay. His medieval business, supplemented by the
monsters and the oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-land,
is finer to look at than the poor fantastic inventions and performances
of the reveling rabble of the priest's day, and serves quite as well,
perhaps, to emphasize the day and admonish men that the grace-line
between the worldly season and the holy one is reached.
This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive possession of New Orleans
until recently. But now it has spread to Memphis and St. Louis and
Baltimore. It has probably reached its limit. It is a thing which could
hardly exist in the practical North; would certainly last but a very
brief time; as brief a time as it would last in London. For the soul
of it is the romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. Take away the
romantic mysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding titles, and
Mardi-Gras would die, down there in the South. The very feature that
keeps it alive in the South--girly-girly romance--would kill it in the
North or in London. Puck and Punch, and the press universal, would fall
upon it and make merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would be
also its last.
Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonaparte may be set